After clinching the Southeast Region V Basketball Tournament top seed on Friday night, the Thunder Mountain High School Falcons boys could have let up on senior night Saturday and coast into the championships next week.

That is not in the Falcons nature.

After Friday’s 62-43 win over Juneau-Douglas High School, TMHS (7-1 conference, 18-6 overall) went head-to-head with the Crimson Bears (3-5, 8-16) on Saturday and came away with a 57-52 win.

Thunder Mountain High School students will be hosting a hunger banquet on Saturday — and while it sounds counterintuitive on the surface, the event raises funds and food donations along with a hefty dose of education.

The banquet is at 6 p.m. on Saturday at TMHS, $5 or two cans of food to get in the door. Once inside, guests will draw the name of a country — a well-developed country, a middle-class developing country or an under-developed country — and they will eat accordingly.

Thunder Mountain’s season ended in heartbreak Friday in a 46-6 loss to Homer in the semifinals of the medium-sized schools state football championships.

The win extends an improbable season for Homer, which according to Coach Cam Wyatt has never made the playoffs. He said this squad holds the best record in the program’s history. It brought tears to the Thunder Mountain sideline and a team that refused to give up in spite of lingering injuries.

Thunder Mountain needed a win Friday night but more importantly, it needed an 18-point victory over Sitka in Juneau to keep its playoff hopes alive.

And Ben Jahn delivered.

Jahn booted a late 27-yard field goal — easily the biggest kick in school history — to give the Falcons a 19-point, 25-6 victory over the Southeast Conference rival Wolves, putting Thunder Mountain in the driver’s seat for its first-ever home playoff game if it can get a win at Ketchikan on Saturday.

Juneau-Douglas continued its cross-country dominance in Southeast on Friday after sweeping the boys’ and girls’ meets at the Sitka Invite, with David Francie and Sid Browning once again winning their respective races.

Thunder Mountain also had a successful meet, finishing third in both races. It was the highest finish ever for the TMHS girls in a 12-team meet after the Falcons full roster ran for the first time this season with one week to go before the region meet at Ketchikan on Saturday.